


through tears, you told me you loved it

by makemelovely



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Grooming, azula has mommy issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26095894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makemelovely/pseuds/makemelovely
Summary: She learns to love it because she was told to.
Relationships: Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 84





	through tears, you told me you loved it

The first time Azula successfully bends lightning, she gasps in delight and runs to tell her father. She meets her mother halfway there, darting by her in the hopes of escaping the sharp disinterest in her smile. 

“Woah, where are you going, little one?” She laughs, catching Azula by her shoulder and spinning her around. She effectively stops Azula’s momentum, a warm smile on her face that doesn’t meet her eyes.

Azula scowls, twisting out of her grasp and continuing to her father. “Like you care.” She calls out, turning a corner and pushing herself harder, eager to distance herself from Ursa. 

Azula knows that Ursa doesn’t love her. She only loves Zuko. She’s not sure why, but she hates it. She hates that sometimes she looks at her mother during dinner and wishes it were her she was smiling fondly at, that it was Azula’s stories from the day she was listening to.

It never is. Azula wishes she could stop caring.

“Father! Father!” Azula crows, bursting into the throne room. An advisor had already begun packing up, slipping scrolls into his robes. Ozai looks up, his dark eyes sharp. “Look what I can do.” Azula focuses as best as she can, her eyes slipping closed as she focuses on the electricity crackling in the air. It’s not much, but it’s enough.

She can feel it pulsing against her skin, heat thrumming through her veins and bursting from her palm like a blast, a sharpness unlike any other, like the prick of a needle or like a million tiny needles all bleeding out through her skin.

When she opens her eyes, her father’s eyebrows have turned upward in surprise and interest. His advisor watches her, awe gleaming in his eyes. Azula, for the first time in a long time, feels proud.

“Very good, Azula.” Her father praises. Azula’s skin sparks with satisfaction. “Let’s take a walk.”

They go out past the courtyard Azula had first discovered her talent in, and farther down to one with a pond for the turtle ducks. Azula wrinkles her eyebrows as Ozai steps to the edge, considering the turtle ducks swimming around.

“What are we doing?” Azula asks, tilting her head and tentatively taking her place by his side.

When her father turns to face her, there will be a strange gleam in his eyes that Azula’s won’t be able to name until later. When she finds the words, she’ll find that the gleam was one of cruelty. “We’re practicing, Azula.” 

“Oh.” Azula nods as if she knew that. She’s not sure what she’ll be practicing on, but there’s a heaviness in her stomach, like a sinking stone. Anticipation gnaws at the back of her mind, but she can feel the dread accompanying it, creeping up her spine and freezing her in place.

Ozai explains that he wants her to practice redirecting lightning at live targets. With a heavy heart, Azula does it. It’s awful. She regrets it immediately. She can feel her actions settling over skin like a cloak, a shield from weakness. The turtle duck is limp in the water, but Azula checks its pulse and finds that its barely alive. It’s pulse is weak and thready beneath her fingertips. 

“Did you like doing that?” Ozai asks. Azula can’t bring herself to think of him as a father. Not now, not after that.

“Yes.” Azula lies, the corners of her mouth wobbling. She feels weak, dizzy with nausea.

His mouth twists into a grim frown, his going cold and flinty as he regards Azula. “You’re lying.” He says, as if it’s as clear as the difference between night and day.

Azula swallows roughly, her heart racing in her chest. “Yes.” She says because he caught her bluff and called it.

He smiles, then, something cold and callous and it reaches his eyes. It doesn’t make Azula feel any better. “You’ll learn to love it.” He says, a declaration or a command. A statement, one he will not bend on so Azula does. She learns to love it because she was told to.

  
  
  
  
  


Ozai’s affection is not a given, it is earned. Azula earns it when she learns how to bend lightning to her will, when her flames burn blue, and when her childhood cruelty turns into something older, something more refined.

Ozai says she’s learned well, that she is better than Zuko. A better fighter, a better strategist, a better child. Azula thinks of the doll her Uncle sent her, long after she outgrew the dolls of her childhood. One cannot play little girl games if one is to be the future Fire Lord, Ozai’s second in command in training.

Sometimes, Azula thinks she has won her father’s love, but his grip will tighten on her shoulder, his eyes will burn, and his voice will be colder than ice as he tells her that she can do better, and if she can’t then she’s no better than her brother.

Without Ozai, Azula has nothing, nobody to love her. Ursa always chose Zuko even before she abandoned them, and Uncle sees her as a little girl, inferior to her brother simply because she’s a girl. She gets the dolls, and Zuko gets trained despite being behind Azula in terms of natural talent. Azula is a gifted prodigy, everyone says so. It’s all she has.

Ozai teaches her many things. How to hurt, how to kill. How to twist until there’s nothing left but a shell of a person, fractured and splintered beyond repair. He teaches Azula how to hate, and Azula in turn tries to teach Zuko. She tries to push his bending along, challenging him to fights that he never wins, his face flushing red and angry when he inevitably loses. They throw rocks at turtle ducks until Ursa tells him it’s wrong. She never bothered to teach Azula right and wrong, but Ozai taught her that nothing she could do to others is wrong.

Her ability to maim, to mark forever is what makes her powerful. She could bend people to her will with her mind, and if that didn’t work, she could burn them to ash, her flame burning brighter than any other benders in years.

Under Ozai’s tutelage, Azula’s mean streak becomes a crater, a canyon. The largest pit there ever was. You can’t cross it and there’s no bottom, something endlessly wide about it all. Azula learns to love power, and the cruelty her father shows her how to wield as a weapon.

She is the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, and she will pull the world around her like a cloak, blurring the lines of what she is and who she could be.

If Ursa thinks she’s a monster, she’ll be the best monster she can be. What is a monstrosity with a beating heart and lightning in her bones? A victor.

Azula can see her whole life unfolding right before her eyes. Her father’s love, her mother’s bitter regret, admiration from her friends and her brother and her uncle. She can see a throne and a nation in the palm of her hand. The love of her people, the fear of her enemies. Azula sees herself with a regal smile and a powerful look in her eyes, her stance strong and firm, unyielding. Azula sees a future where she gets everything she ever wanted and she doesn’t need to bend for it, doesn’t need to become pliant and weak to obtain it.

Azula’s life begins like this: lightning dancing against her palm, electric and thrilling and spine tingling. A turtle duck laying limp in the water, and Azula smoothing her shaking hands against her legs to try and keep the tears at bay. Her throat closing in on itself, a tangled mess of emotions laying at the center of her heart and winding around each of her ribs. Something like self loathing and fear and grief twisting itself into her very bone structure until it is the only thing holding her up. Ozai’s cold, proud eyes, and the sinister weight of his smirk. His firm hand on her shoulder, her lie on her lips, and the sudden, sweeping knowledge that Azula will never be loved like Zuko is if she doesn’t mold herself to the image of a weapon, a little girl with lightning and hate in her heart.

It’s a survival tactic and it’s a kind of killing.

Azula became the monster she was taught to be. If you try hard enough, you can be anything you like. It just takes practice, determination, and strength.

The only thing you can’t will yourself to be is loved. And with a newfound hunger in her hollow bones and a monstrous feeling creeping into her heart, Azula learns this the hard way.

**Author's Note:**

> hi i hope you enjoyed! if you're at all interested you can find me on [ tumblr](https://makemelovely.tumblr.com/) and on [ twitter](https://twitter.com/tyzulafilms).


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